Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Brief Thoughts on "Marceline and the Scream Queens"

It's also been hard for me to get back into single-issue
comic collecting after so many years of concentrating on trades. To me it
always makes more sense to wait for the issues to come out first, but at the
same time, I know I'm missing out on a lot as it comes, while the nerd Joneses
are always ahead.

To change that, I decided to start small and pick up all
six issues of Marceline and the Scream Queens, the Adventure
Time

miniseries
about Marceline the Vampire Queen and her rock band: vampire Keila,
shapeshifter Guy, and ghost Bongo. And
Princess Bubblegum is along as manager while they go out on tour. There will be
spoilers here, so tread slowly.

Once again, I have to admit I'm not as up to speed on Adventure
Time

as I want to
be, so take my impressions lightly if you like. Marceline and Princess
Bubblegum (or "Peebles", or "P.B.", and other assorted
nicknames), are two of my favourite characters on the show, so it was fun to
read a story about them. Furthermore, I just enjoy reading stories about
artists, since whatever they actually do, I can relate to a lot of their
experiences.

Marceline
and the Scream Queens naturally includes some of that,
with Marceline's insecurity and rage over getting a bad review being a major
plot thread. Her feelings are not overblown or overdone, and there are plenty
of other things that happen along the way, so no one needs to worry about
Marceline being too angsty—not that I ever would have.

Like everything Adventure Time
this comic is fun to look at, with there being so many weird settings and
creatures. Meredith Gran's pencils have an appealing childish scrawl, and each
issue has a short backup strip illustrated by a different artist, and it's also
fun to see their takes on the series's art style.

The previously-established characters act and sound
in-character, though I was surprised at the presenting Marceline's father as a
stereotypical "goofy dad", when he and Marceline have had such a
strained relationship in the TV show.

Where it really does start to come unglued are the lines
that seem a little too knowing, a little too adult,
like the comic is trying to bring those subversive parts of the TV series closer
to the surface to excite older fans.

Writing is a tricky business, but I'm usually not in
favour of giving a fan-favourite aspect of a series more attention in order to
delight the die-hard audience. Marceline and the Scream Queens
just has these moments that make me laugh, but also squirm a little at how much
they seem like playing to the older audience. Like this exchange from the final
issue, in which we found out who wrote the review that upset Marceline so much:

Princess
Bubblegum: Then why couldn't you write a positive review?

Lumpy
Space Princess: Um..because that's not how you like something. You like
something by telling everyone you hate

it.

It so obviously sounds like something for nerds, for we who
have seen so many of our buddies hate what they claim to love, or vice versa,
that it makes me roll my eyes a little. I mean, it's funny and on-the-nose, but
it just doesn't quite fit with Adventure
Time as we know it.

(As proof of my nerd bona fides, I'm the same person who
wonders whether Marceline technically being Keila's sovereign has any effect on
their relationship. I suck.)

You could say all of this is not as bad as Ice King writing
"fanfiction" in the TV show and having it become an entire
genderswapped universe, meaning that the TV series is really the leader in fan
pandering. However, the famous genderswap universe worked as a neutral
experiment, before that "in-story fanfiction" explanation was trotted
out. Some of the stuff in this comic doesn't stand out well enough on its own.

(And now the genderswap universe is getting its own comic
series, too. Huh.)

The other biggest example of fan pandering I can think of
is the Earl of Lemongrab back-up strip, which is largely about the character
screaming his catchphrase"UNACCEPTABLE!" over and over again as he goes through his day
and runs into various annoyances. Look, I've clapped like a trained seal at the
recitation of nerdy catchphrases, too, but doesn't mean there can't be anything
else. Lemongrab had a pretty interesting story they could've played around
with.

Besides all that, I couldn't quite buy that Princess
Bubblegum would cast aside her royal duties and put Finn and Jake in charge of
the Candy Kingdom so that she could follow Marceline on her tour. I realize Marceline
and P.B. have a complex, conflicted relationship, which I do enjoy, but I still
tilted my head a little.

Since Peebles's decision kicks off the story, I'm not
ready to dismiss it as fan pandering, but I can't accept it as something
neutral, either. Marceline x Princess Bubblegum is a verypopular fan pairing, and I can see why, but it's still not canon, so this
comic can't help but feel like it's courting the internet. Nothing explicit
happens between the two, but once you know the background it's impossible to not
think Bubblegum was written into the story to excite shippers.

But all in all, this is a good comic. Fun characters, fun
art, and I'd love to see a trade. Please?